Green Rays - Green Rays - S/T - 1LP

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 “The band pivot in a fresh direction, one marked by psych-pop tropes, ambient textures, and glossy synths” - CLASH

Previously known for fronting critically acclaimed band My Sad Captains, Ed says “the band was becoming a bit of a Sugababes situation. I was the only original member left in the band. When another drummer announced he was leaving, I decided it was time for something new. Not that I’d felt in any way constrained as de facto captain of the Captains, but it felt freeing to be thinking about a fresh start. I’d poured my life into the band, made records people liked on labels I loved. So, time for a change and my life was changing too.”

With the project’s debut single ‘Run’ described by CLASH as ‘marked by psych-pop tropes, ambient textures, and glossy synths’, the track sets the tone perfectly for the project as a whole.

Rooted in the strong sense of melodic melancholy that shaped My Sad Captains, sonically, Green Rays could be likened to: if Eno collaborated with Harmonia and Cluster in the forest of Forst, then stopped over in Dunedin to jam with the Clean, or hung out in Hoboken with the Feelies. Drifting ambience, gentle jangle, motorik pulses and glimmering tones: all combine to create a striking mood of stretched out calm on Wallis’ new music.

The 8 tracks which comprise Green Rays’ self-titled debut mark a new beginning for the multi-faceted artist. A culmination of seismic life events - the birth of his first son, the loss of his second, and a move from his long-term London base to find space and time in the country - the songs take in the slow skies of Lincolnshire where he grew up, the parakeets of south-east London where he made his life, and the chalk hills where he now resides. On the record, Wallis is rejoined by former Captains colleagues from different eras of the band’s four album career: his brother Jim Wallis on drums, who also mixed the album; chief sonic architect Leon Dufficy on guitar; Steve Blackwell on bass and Henry Thomas on keys.
 
 The band now takes its name from a solar optical phenomenon. As the artist Tacita Dean describes: “When the sun sets into a clear crisp horizon and when there is no land in front of you for a few hundred miles ... you stand a very good chance of seeing the green ray. The last ray of the dying sun to refract and bend beneath the horizon is the green ray, which is just slower than the red or the yellow ray. Sailors see them more than the rest of us and they have come to signify - for some - a harbinger of great change or fortune in their lives.”

The artwork, designed by British artist Richard T Walker and entitled “The space inside repetition (expanded) #2”, is a depiction of Mount Hood in Oregon, USA. The image was repeatedly printed and scanned multiple times, causing the image to slip away from its original form - an apt metaphor for pulling away from the past and towards embracing the future.

1. Getting Back Again 2. Beginner’s Mind 3. Parakeets 4. Run 5. In Between 6. Slow Time Clock 7. Only One Way To Go 8. Hard To Find